Of course I had to try again after saying that I quit and I managed to beat that map after all... Thanks for the free soul/megaspheres heh. And lol at the blue area, I'm sure Capellan will have some nice things to say about that one. :P

SteveD said:
One more thing, that music track was really nice. What was it?

Hmm, I sort of assumed you'd just hear "In the Dark" from DooM II. Your demo playback method was able to detect the music WAD I had loaded, and emulate it without your having it loaded yourself? That's pretty cool....is that a Risen3D feature? Did it also pick up the modified colormap/palette WAD I had loaded? Oh, and to actually answer the question, the track was "Dreadnaught" by Mark Klem (from MM map 02, seemed to fit the mood), which I loaded from the original Memento Mori's music WAD. IDMUS is a function I use a whole lot, since I do take music selection seriously, even when a mapset only uses the stock tunes.

SteveD said:
The monster-clumping problem might be soluble with a Block Monster line at the stairs, though that could create it's own problems, i.e., the "shooting gallery" effect. Hmmmmm . . .

Well, just my two cents, but I'd consider the clumping preferable to a monster-blocking line. Those things always feel so hackneyed, to me. I mean, I get that they're really practical/have some good housekeeping applications, but I still dislike actually being able to see one in effect.

St. Alfonzo said:
It just occurred to me that I never make any effort whatsoever to find, acknowledge, or otherwise mention secrets in any way unless they're plainly noteworthy. I could work my way through an entire 32 maps and not notice that I wound up with 0%.

What attributes would you say make a secret plainly noteworthy? How involved they are? How potent/balance-impacting they are? How they impact map traversal, if they do so at all (a lot of the alternate routes in map 06 are related to secrets in one way or another)?

You have extended demo format enabled in Prboom+ so it adds info about the wads you load at the end of the demo file. AFAIK only Prboom+ can read that sort of info and automatically load the used wads (if it can find them in the usual folder, of course). And IDMUS, just like any other cheat, doesn't get recorded btw.

Yeah, I didn't think IDMUS and the like actually showed up during playback, so I was surprised he mentioned something about the music, although now that I think about I guess what he heard was probably the track from MM's map 06, and not the track from 02 that I IDMUS'd to, right? When watching my own demos (via -playdemo from the command line), the alternate music and other miscellany is only present if I load the requisite WADs via -file like normal, no matter what port I'm using for playback. Now that you say this, my assumption is that PrBooM+'s config file must need to be set to search in the proper directories (e.g. where MMMUS.wad can be found) for the extended demo functionality to work automatically?

I don't know how prboom-plus works with directories, I just have all my wads in its folder. (so there are like 16000 files) If you have wads in a different folder, you'll probably need to use that DOOMWADDIR thing.

Memfis said:
Of course I had to try again after saying that I quit and I managed to beat that map after all... Thanks for the free soul/megaspheres heh. And lol at the blue area, I'm sure Capellan will have some nice things to say about that one. :P

I hope you made a demo. I'm eager to watch it when the time comes. Watched your 07 demo. Very impressive. I can't believe you squeezed through a 32-unit area. I laughed my ass off! :D

Ah, the blue room. There are stories behind that. I'm sure Capellan won't be the only one to murder me on that one. :D

mouldy said:
After reading the other reviews I just twigged that the author is in the room, so here's a demo for what its worth:http://www.mediafire.com/download/u...os06-mouldy.lmp
I ran through it a second time to find more stuff but didn't find any secrets, and got caught out by the exit again...

Thanks for the demo, mouldy! Of all the players I've seen, your style is the closest to mine, but you're much better at corner abuse. I was pleased to see I almost got you at the Blue Armor. ;)

Ah yes, the unmarked exit, a major design flaw in this map and the next -- and several more. I'm really shaking my head at all the mistakes we made. Watching alfonzo's playthrough was a bit disheartening, I must admit, but a valuable learning experience, too.

Map07: Deathstay
Well, it's certainly not a MAP07 clone. :P Decoration was pretty much nil, but I did enjoy most of the gameplay present in the map. Not too keen on the ending unfortunately, being that it mostly consisted of sniping Arachnotrons. :-/ It's not the best map in the set, but it's alright.

Not even thirty seconds of watching the demo and Heretic already nabs all five secrets. I'm so damn envious of that fellow, I try to play in a similar style but I'm just not that good enough, even on HMP.

Instead of follow Heretic's rather peculiar route, I opened up the secret in front of me first. I then opted to get the mancubus to infight with imps first, then SSG him while he's distracted. Then go through the next secret, chaingunning the crowd there. Unfortunately, trying to nab the RL was a failure, again, I'm envious of Heretic's running skills.

The first very memorable area was where the YK is; this is where imps attack from all sides. I expected to lose it there, but thanks to an invulnerability from a secret (which I'm pretty sure did not appear in the UV-MAX demo I watched), it wasn't hard. The baron yard afterwards had a novelty encounter with a baron trapped in a square cage of explosive barrels. One splay from him and he blows the barrels all around him in a nice suicidal display. Of course, I had to take care of his meddling friends, heh.

I liked the staircase as well as the nice sky where the BK was, and also got the chance to cause rev/HK/imp infighting there. Behind the blue door, the enemies got their comeuppance and killing a mancubus lowers the wall to reveal the arachnotrons. I retreated back cause I just somehow know something would ambush me, and took care of a hellknight, with my newly acquired photonic blaster of strange blue energy. Then, it was hide-and-peek-a-boo at the arachs, which gave me a megasphere reward coupled with a side dish of revenants. Cleaned up and exited. Overall, best aesthetics are encountered at the blue key area and gameplay was fun throughout. Final Time 3:47.

Demon of the Well said:
Hmm, I sort of assumed you'd just hear "In the Dark" from DooM II. Your demo playback method was able to detect the music WAD I had loaded, and emulate it without your having it loaded yourself? That's pretty cool....is that a Risen3D feature?

Off to play Map07, but first, the track I heard was indeed Dreadnought. I play all demos in PRBoom and just happened to have all the wads in there. Funny thing, whenever I play a bit of MM2, I never load the music wad. I will most likely nominate MM2 for the next old wad month, though HR is fine by me as well, or whatever it happens to be.

BTW, I forgot to give you props on certain pro moves from your demo, such as stepping between an Arachnotron's plasma burst, and barrel punching. I should practice, I really should. ;)

MAP07: Long before arguments about finding the fun in slaughtermaps began, Berkowitz was already playing around with infighting. Seriously! The manc fires across at the imps, the imps in the yellow key area fire at the poor caged demons, and picking up the red key unleashes some cacos to happily duel the remaining barons. I was surprised at how easily every monster wanted to rip one another apart in this.

Anyway, it’s finally time for our infamous MAP07, which uses its unique tag excellently. The map itself is a series of self contained fights, none of which are too threatening (although I died at the yellow key one :/ ) leading up to a finale I didn’t expect. I really like the mancs and arachnatrons being “optional” monsters to tango with for the megasphere award, and found it to be a great twist on the concept. While the map itself was noticeably lacking in visuals, Berkowitz still delivers a “Dead Simple” that’s better than many of the knock-offs I’ve played.

I’ve joined the pistol-starters! Alfonzo’s playthrough, as I’ve said, was disheartening, because he just sliced through the maps. There’s too much health and ammo in the maps, making them too easy on continuous play. I do dread the starts of some of them – Map19 and Map23 – on UV pistol start, but I can always go to HMP if necessary. Anyway, reading the reviews, it seemed the players having the most fun were the pistol-starters. For as long as I can, I want to do both continuous and pistol-start. If I have to give up one, I'll give up continuous. Let those death counts pile up! ;D

This map is trivially easy on UV Continuous. I barely took a hit. I did wide circling in the Manc room and the cooperative Imps killed him for me, at the cost of many Imp lives. Almost all of them, in fact. I dusted off the last 2 or 3, and then went to kill the Revvie and the zombieboys. After that, it was down below to get the yellow key. This room is, IMO, a design flaw, because it’s so easy to grab the key and run back upstairs. That might have been part of Rob’s strategy, because pistol-starters can waste a lot of ammo in here if they go for UV-Max, and find themselves in deep shit upstairs.

The early sections were a bit harder on pistol-start, because I wasn’t as lucky at starting infights in the Manc room and got blasted down to 60% by the Manc. The Revvie died nice ‘n easy to the shotgun, and a little corner abuse allowed me to annihilate the zombieboys at the cost of taking one bullet.

Going upstairs to the barren Baron arena (sorry!), was another snoozer of a fight. No hits taken all the way through the Cacos. Pistol start was a little more exciting because the ammo was counting down, but I was able to lure the Cacos down and then race up to their platform to grab some ammo, then I dropped down and for a while had them all bunched together while I circle-strafed with the Chaingun on continuous fire. Whee!!!! One of them finally broke away and I took a glancing blow before I finished them off with the SSG.

The most challenging part of the map was the blue key. The strategy I chose was to walk out and blast the Sergeants on the stairway and stand my ground when the Chaingunners came out, just sidestepping back and forth and spraying bullets. Took ‘em all out both times with no hits taken! Starting to feel like a badass here. Next move, both times, was to run all the way up the stairs, letting the Imps and HKs emerge, and continue on as the Revvies rose up from the pavement, grab the key, and race back down the stairs. This worked great on continuous play, but on the pistol-start I took a Revvie rocket in the back, and later died in the Manc room when I demonstrated my awe-inspiring keyboarder Revvie-dodging skills. There went my perfect run. ;D Next try I got hemmed in a bit by nobles and dropped to 30%, but managed to break through and cause a lot of infighting. Revvies and HKs and Imps were still on my trail, but this time I was able to dodge the rockets by going through the fake walls and chaingunning the unseen Revvies from the other side.

To be honest, I’m having a lot of fun in this section on pistol-start.

The final fights are pretty trivial. You can race to the Plasma Gun and the Mancs just stand there and do nothing. Yeah, both times. You can also exit the map by pressing the switch for the unmarked exit. Oh, bad Rob! I remember the sound of disgust made by Alfonzo when he did that very thing, and I can’t blame him.

So why did me and Rob, the main playtesters, allow this to happen? Well, part of the answer is we must have been taking Dumbass Pills. The other part, of course, was our belief that Real Men Don’t Run Away from Mancs and Arachnotrons! ;D

I convinced the deaf Mancs to fight by pumping some rounds in them, and amazingly, on continuous play, I killed the first one without awaking the other, then blasted that one without either Manc actually opening fire. Oh, such larks! Not so lucky on pistol start. It’s like the monsters could sniff my vulnerability, and so I got dropped to about 31% before the walls began to descend.

Yes, Rob did a way cool variation on the special tags theme. Yes, you have to battle 4 Arachnotrons, a very easy battle since you have a PG and some columns to hide behind. When you kill the spider babies, a small floor rises, giving you access to the Megasphere, grabbing of which causes the columns to release Revvies, easily disposed of. Still pretty damned cool.

Yeah, this map ain’t pretty, and it’s boxy, but it’s clean. There sure is a lack of decorative Things in these maps, isn’t there? ;D A very barren look overall. Secrets are quite obtuse, but on pistol start, I found the Invisibility and the Backpack. Never got the RL. The yellow key trap is borked by design, a real waste. The map is too easy on UV, whether continuous or pistol start. And yet, it’s still kinda fun. I also liked the light level work on the staircase leading to the blue key. Overall, a fun map.

There are maybe two relatively positive things I can say about it: The first is that I appreciate that it's not a symmetrical mancubus/arach arena (I will fondly play countless re-imaginings of many other DooM map styles, but Dead Simple clones really don't do it for me, for whatever reason). The second is that I think it's rather clever that a player with good instincts is rewarded for not immediately killing the harmless caged pinkies in the yellow keycard room--let them live and they make an excellent piece of living cover against the imp trap. Okay, I thought of one more thing....I kind of like the imp/HK coffins lining that big staircase. I usually like that particular construction, whatever map it appears in, and this is no different.

...yeah, but that's about it. It's boxy, flat, ugly, lacks lighting (except for the yellow keycard room), and resembles absolutely nothing, or put another way, completely lacks any sense of place. Of course, Doom is a game where abstract/stylized settings are the rule rather than the exception, but this isn't even 'abstract'....it's just random. Each area has a different texture, and the sum total of the textures adds up to nothing. It's like Berkowitz just picked texture names out of a hat as he built each room.

Combat is horribly turgid as well, with simplistic prefab infight setups being the dominating theme for much of the outing. If you think about it, it's really not unlike the old Fortress of Mystery, except E2M9 has the benefit of probably being the first time that many of us ever saw this quirk of the Doom engine really brought to the fore in that way. The end stretch that features the actual map 07 tag setup eschews this, but replaces it with something even worse--grinding through a helpless PE and equally impotent mancubi in a urethra-tight corridor. When they're dead, you get an optional arachnotron fight in a small yard with basic cover (made trivial by the free plasma rifle given moments before), and then some truant skeletons. That is, IF you don't instinctively hit the unmarked exit switch before the walls into the arach yard are done descending (<--guilty). Assuming you stick around for the finale, the final insult is that one of the last three skeletons is deaf and sequestered in an out of the way closet back in the hall you came from, which means you must suffer the indignity of going out of your way to drag him out by the scruff of the neck (that is, if he had one) in order to finish the clean sweep. I mean.....why?

SteveD said:
So why did me and Rob, the main playtesters, allow this to happen?

Since Rob was the map designer, there's also the fact that he might well have thought the outcome was perfectly fine. It was, presumably, what he intended. That's one of the main reasons to get someone else to playtest your stuff. They'll complain about things you never even considered.

Capellan said:
Since Rob was the map designer, there's also the fact that he might well have thought the outcome was perfectly fine. It was, presumably, what he intended. That's one of the main reasons to get someone else to playtest your stuff. They'll complain about things you never even considered.

I completely agree with you, as I always have on this issue. Even if I hadn't, watching alfonzo's playthrough, and listening to the comments he and Tarnsman made, would have swayed me to your view. The ability to finish Map07 without even having to fight the deaf Mancs, much less letting the walls descend to fight the spiders, is totally ridiculous. What a huge design error. All he had to do was put the switch on the outside wall. Jeez.

TMT needed a full year to work and outside critique from people who knew what the fuck was up. A lot of these maps are still fun, IMO, but they could have been much better.

Short and sweet, I figured this would be a Dead Simple tribute in some way, so slayed the first Mancubus I saw. There are a few fights that are low-key scuffles whilst gathering keys (and a pointless secret-marked sector that did nothing) -- the after-key ambush traps are very easily avoided and ran from. Last part was nice, how the 'easy' way out of switching the exit denies the player a small fight with Arachnotrons and a Megasphere reward. Decided to take it -- I don't recollect when the next Bagrow map is. ;)

SteveD said:
TMT needed a full year to work and outside critique from people who knew what the fuck was up. A lot of these maps are still fun, IMO, but they could have been much better.

Well, I appreciate many of RoC's quirks that probably wouldn't be present if it was "properly" playtested. If I ever make a megawad, maybe I'll just upload it right to /idgames without asking anyone's opinion, so that my maps don't lost their uniqueness. I remember how, during the beta-testing of Reverie, valkiriforce was upset: he said that with all the changes made to the maps he was starting to feel that he is "losing" his work, that it doesn't belong to him anymore. Maybe there is too much feedback in the current community, if that makes any sense.

Memfis said:
If I ever make a megawad, maybe I'll just upload it right to /idgames without asking anyone's opinion, so that my maps don't lost their uniqueness.

I'm tempted to do this with Nex Credo, to be honest.

I think that's one of the things I like about Realm of Chaos, in that it has a very different 'feel' due to all its oddities. If every wad is going for the same overall kinds of things in gameplay, there's a danger of it all feeling a bit homogenous. Which is why Sinister Intention (my previous one, not to hijack the thread but it is relevant) didn't have any collectable chaingun (to force the occasional desperation pistol-play) and did things like all but force the rocket launcher on MAP04. Reviews on idgames differ, but the feeling that I put something different out there is a great one.

Much respect to TMT way back when, for getting their shit together in such an insular environment.

@Memfis: Yea, I usually try to rewrite my comments if I accidentally delete them but this time it wasn't really my fault so it was extra annoying.

Map 07: Deathstay

Eh, not a great map this one. The architecture is really boring as it's just one boxy room after another. Random texture choices and very little details don't help much either. And another unmarked exit... But as opposed to others, I did enjoy the gameplay somewhat. Yes, the battles aren't very interconnected and it kinda feels like slapped together in a hurry but at least the way I tackled them wasn't that bad. The Imp ambush was a particularly memorable spot and the blue key area was okay as well. Caco/Baron arena was pretty dull, I'll admit that. The unmarked exit got me AGAIN so I missed the Arachs the first time around. Replayed the map and looks like I didn't miss much. Agree with DotW though in that the infight scenarios were a bit too obvious to see and get going. Not a horribad map overall but below average nevertheless. Somewhat enjoyable for the first time but replayability is questionable.

FDA. No deaths but sadly no maxkills either. I assumed you cannot escape the yellow key room instantly so I dealt with the imps straight away which lead to an interesting fight.

Hmmm.. kind of boxy plain arena type map, I guess that follows in the map07 tradition. First room was imps versus mancubus while I stood back and watched. The imps won, although an eager revenant wanted to join in so much he fired through the wall from the next room. 2nd room was a bunch of zombie men versus a few rounds of shotgun shells. Then there was a room with some demons in a cage where they couldn't get you, and a load of imps who could - but only after you already picked up the key and had no reason to stay in there.

What was next.. ah yes, some barons who were having an argument with each other over who shot the barrel, while some cacos shot some imps. Then there was a bit of actual fighting on some stairs, although i'm guessing that could also have been dealt with without firing a shot if you had your heart set on it. Finally a drop down a hole to face a pain elemental who couldn't attack you from being too close, and a couple of mancs guarding the exit switch. I say guarding, they were actually hiding round the corner in the hope that nobody would just walk past them and press it. I could have just done that I guess, but there was no indication it was the exit at that point so I gunned them down and watched the walls slowly creep down to reveal the final guardians of the exit. Only I didn't, because I had already pressed the switch while waiting for the ambush to happen. I felt sorry for the arachnotrons having waited there for no good reason so I reloaded the map and let them shoot at me a bit.

Some strange decisions were made here, but at least it wasn't map 04. I think any future maps would have to work pretty hard to look bad after that one.

Memfis said:
Well, I appreciate many of RoC's quirks that probably wouldn't be present if it was "properly" playtested.

Even the blue room in 09? ;D BTW, I have already revised Map09, and the blue room, though cleaned up and improved a bit, is still blue! Sometimes a mapper has to stand his ground for what he believes in, and goddamnit, it's just a blue fucking wall for chrissakes! :D

Memfis said:
I remember how, during the beta-testing of Reverie, valkiriforce was upset: he said that with all the changes made to the maps he was starting to feel that he is "losing" his work, that it doesn't belong to him anymore. Maybe there is too much feedback in the current community, if that makes any sense.

It does make sense. You're talking about the creation of a consensus realty that can, possibly, stifle creativity. Imagine if someone released a map today that was like IWAD Map15. That is a jagoff map, and anything like it would probably have people pissed about getting blown away by monsters too high to see without mouselook. That is a cruel, cruel map. We accept it, whether we like it or not, because it's part of the IWAD.

And yeah, I know some of the RoC maps are ugly, but hey, I recently pistol-started Sandy Petersen's The Courtyard. Need I say more? Well, here's more, it was dead easy on UV, too. :P

To end this chapter of the psychodrama resulting from alfonzo's playthrough, I want to make clear that when I said I was really pissed off after watching him play Map04, I wasn't pissed off at alfonzo, I was pissed off at myself and Rob Berkowitz, and Jim Bagrow, too, for allowing that ridiculous draw-down in difficulty between UV and HMP. That's not a quirk, that's a colossal flaw in difficulty settings. Where alfonzo is concerned, I'm just completely and totally butthurt that he's playing HMP continuous. You never shoulda played this on HMP, alfonozo! This is RoC, not Stardate. ;D

MAP07 - “Deathstay” by Rob Berkowitz
This map does feel rather disjointed visually. Ammo is pretty tightly balanced. Infighting is far too easy to make happen and the map07 stuff is too easy to either avoid or just plain skip.
Oh forgot about the caged pinkies, what was that about :P
I didn't feel too much hatred towards the map, but not a lot of love either.

Back to what I think of as "1996 quality" which isn't a good thing. As others have said, it's a lot of big empty boxes connected by mostly tiny corridors, and texture usage differing from room to room. It's not as chaotic as say, MAP03's texturing, but it's still silly. The first questionable design choice comes right from the start, by having the player face the secret wall instead of the rest of the level. The monsters at the start probably needed some block sound flags too, as attacking the mancubus lured the revenant out to pump some rockets at my ass.

After that are some trivially easy fights (demons in a cage? why?). The blue key staircase and ambush are the only real tough fight here, given the design (monsters above you with lack of cover in the staircase). And then the somewhat mystifying ending... I actually played it "normally" at first and was worried that leaving the mancubus at the top unslain would make the map unbeatable, but nope, that switch can be pressed right away without waiting for the manucubus/arachantrons. :P You do lose out on the megasphere, though. It's nothing great, but nothing that really made me dislike it either though. 2/5

Played a couple more maps. Everything that needs to be said about them already has been so I'll be brief:

MAP04 - “Sewers” by Jim Bagrow

Terrible map! I was let off lightly due to playing in HMP and so avoiding the infamous AV fight. The area that normally housed was ironically the highlight for me. It had a mood, dirty look, housed two different fights and had no real competition from the other areas.

Worst parts were height variation being an obstacle to seeing monsters you need to shoot and the nukage inconsistency.

MAP05 - “Mission Control” by Slava Pestov

Saying this one was better is not particularly flattering but I was pleasantly surprised by the raise/lowering lift in a mapset otherwise bereft of any sort of technical flair so far.

Mapflow was still basic however and combat was tepid throughout. architecture and detailing was bland but inoffensive.

SteveD said (about map 4):
A couple issues I'd like to address -- Kristian said it was a noob move to put a PE in a big room. But what about IWAD Map 20? That had two PEs in a far more massive space. I remember waiting and waiting for them to get close enough to shoot rockets at. ;D

Not to beat a dead horse here (we should probably just let map 4 be) but I've been away for a few days and needed to clarify this. I never claimed placing PEs in a large room was noobish. Where did you get that idea? I did say that the map was challenging for the wrong reasons, though, partly because of it. This might be due to inexperience with how to best use and deploy monsters; when I played the map I felt, for example, that that Baron was thrown in right after the nukeage corridor, seemingly because "Well, we haven't used a Baron yet, have we?"... and the PE in that vast area right after could just as well have been three PEs. Or 5 Cacos.

This cavalier attitude towards monster types and deployment is something I wanted to mention in my review but forgot (note, it's not necessarily a bad thing, e.g. some maps in Raven are fun to play in spite of more or less random monster usage). OTOH, it could all be intentional and the author is a sadist...

EDIT:Map 5 -- Mission Control
Smallish tech base map has some things going for it but is hampered by some silly/strange moments (e.g. the Mastermind setup and the megasphere section at the end) and some not-so-great gameplay, e.g. getting blocked by monsters as you are jumping down into nukeage or into the courtyard in one of the secrets. Much of it felt, and was, quite bare, too. I did like the theme of the map though, with the central lift kind of like MM2 map 28, Dystopia 3 map 8, or Requiem map 8, and the last two secrets were nifty. --2/5

Kristian Ronge said:
Not to beat a dead horse here (we should probably just let map 4 be) but I've been away for a few days and needed to clarify this. I never claimed placing PEs in a large room was noobish. Where did you get that idea?

Ah, my bad. It seems I succumbed to -- how do you say it? -- an idee fixe, where the idea is fixed into my head that everyone in TMT was a bunch of noobs (which is true), and thus, that comments on our many and manifest failings tend to be comments on noob failings in general. Or, put another way, I read into your comments what I expected to see. My apologies, Kristian. :)

Central hub area, always good to have one of these once in a while. Through the first door, I had a few problems with straferunning to the switch, but perserverance always triumphs. And it reaps a nice key reward. No issues with combat here.

Through first locked door, there's the lift, one of those "perpetual" ones. So it would be rats if I'd missed the lift getting on. Followed Hitherto's easy-to-follow route here. On the right, I see what appears to be a "Waste Tunnels" scenario, where walking in the middle light triggers a bridge. There are enemies down in the nukage (this time it hurts) who occasionally harass me through the teleporter. Nothing to it. On the left, the teleporter sequence is quite interesting, but whatever. At the top I remember it was ruddy hell hanging out there trying to eliminate monsters there (note to UV players, there's an archvile there), so I decided to grab the key and run like Hitherto did. Later on when I got the BFG I came back and showed them who's boss.

Next locked door: Got three easy secrets and a megaarmor. Cool. Entered teleporter, Tricks-and-Traps has it's revenge! This time with Hellknights! Their area is slowly depressed downward so they couldn't get up to me although they can still fire at me. I alerted cybie so he could anger his smaller compadres. Wonder how that worked out for him? Alas, poor cybie, I didn't know him well. So, in his revenge, I got the invulnerability and BFG and gave the hellknights their ticket back to hell. Then I grabbed the key and megasphere and flipped switches and exited.

Final locked door: Before that, I took care to finally get the soulsphere secret. Okay, next area was a bit weird. Nukage walls with a few areas depressed downwards, what's with that? Got through to the teleporter, and this area was quite weird. It took me quite awhile before realizing what triggers what until watching the demo showed me a quite viable solution. Unfortunately, this means I had to wait for a slow-ass bridge to rise up to the final switch that lowers the exit. Boring. I probably could've done what Hitherto did and used a death-exit but I'm a survivalist type of git who wants to keep my shit for the next level. Oh well. Final Time 5:39.

BTW, I was recently on the rlmchaos page in DSDA and noticed some new UV-MAX and UV-SPEED demos by a guy named Phil Renshaw. There not any better than the demos that Heretic and Hitherto did, but it's quite interesting that people are still doing demos for this wad (also they're complevel 1).

MAP08: I had a pretty funny moment near the start when the HKs warped in. The chaingunners pissed them off and the nobles went to go battle them, but the door closed in their faces. I had to slip by next to them and, shoulder to shoulder, I helped open the door so they could exact their revenge. It was a cute momentary truce that was more fleeting than an adolescent summer love.

Pestov continues his adoration of lifts here past the blue key door. There’s an interesting fight in the next room where pinkies and cacos teleport up onto a narrow loop that you must defend as a nearby bridge raises, which was more entertaining than I thought it would be. The teleporter ledges were mildly entertaining if only at face value, but it ends in a pretty bland battle at the top as an AV pops in first followed by an extremely slow trickle of his henchmen long after his epitaph has been written. The “Tricks and Traps” HK-cybie square was the most interesting part of the map, largely because I fell into the pit midway through the battle which led to some really close calls. After everything had been dealt with I realized I could’ve gotten out at any time, but this ultimately resulted in a more riveting experience. The final teleporter puzzle was also mildly interesting as it took me a while to determine where the elevator was, and other than that I had no qualms. Still a lot of armor thrown around (1 green, 2 blue and a megasphere?!) but this was another decent one.